tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post5980071152924600696..comments2018-03-19T07:49:18.532-04:00Comments on In the Middle: For Eileen: A Shark in FormaldehydeJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68971640430483434012007-07-20T20:47:00.000-04:002007-07-20T20:47:00.000-04:00Well, not empty exactly -- it'd stage an excessive...Well, not empty exactly -- it'd stage an excessive submission to authority. Mourning (instead of identification) might be a way around that submission.J J Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30408485781174359172007-07-20T20:21:00.000-04:002007-07-20T20:21:00.000-04:00Dan, not that this makes any difference ... but I'...Dan, not that this makes any difference ... but I'm a mostly faithful vegetarian as well. Lacking a desire to consume most animals, though, doesn't really change how I feel about this one shark, transformed as it has been. Then again, I do own a pair of leather shoes and ...<BR/><BR/>But yes, thanks for connecting this back to Lindow Man and mourning. Sacrifice would be quite empty without that.J J Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-18030381242908206562007-07-20T17:42:00.000-04:002007-07-20T17:42:00.000-04:00There is definately a way that the problem of numb...There is definately a way that the problem of numbers and dare I say it, "context" seem to color our first reactions to this. Lots of sharks vs. one shark. Art vs. game-fishing. <BR/><BR/>I have been the mostly faithful vegitarian for a good while now, and did feel similarly to Eileen about the harvesting animals for art.<BR/><BR/>I remeber feeling the same way even after the first time I saw a screen of Brakhage's "mothlight" which I feel at the same time a phenomonal and productive work. <BR/><BR/>But also, I have this feeling of "well, now that its done that piece is damn interesting"--even as I have an impulse t mourn the shark. I mention mourning since we are using the word sacrifice which brings me right back to Lindow Man. How do we feel about his killers? How did he feel about them? <BR/><BR/>Now this shark on the other hand--just a shark right? A map of itself, as nicola said <BR/><BR/>"an overgrown 'sample' that, like a 1:1 scale map, undoes its own usefulness" --which, if I am not wrong, is not too disimilar to a formulation concerning history and communities that Eileen has mentioned on this site (??)--this map--produced sacrificially--as an excess--is a very perverse "gift of death" because it fails to be one, attempting to give but only producing a reserve. I cannot help but wonder if, instead of a secular sacred, it is de-secularizing the secular--in the manner of a high literary modernist. I catch a whif of Ezra Pound somewhere in the exchage of salt water for pickling juice.dan remeinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-86196375584341957992007-07-20T15:53:00.000-04:002007-07-20T15:53:00.000-04:00You know, it's funny -- and no doubt ethically inc...You know, it's funny -- and no doubt ethically inconsistent. Harvesting sharks en masse for shark fin soup bothers me. Harvesting one, not so much. But I'm also not overly bothered by vacationers who go big game fishing, harvest a swordfish, and later grill it up and eat it. I'd never do it myself, and honestly I'd prefer a single shark as art than a thousand on boats for sport and food ... but I wouldn't sign a petition to ban sport fishing (even if I would never do it myself).<BR/><BR/>The sacrifice of the animal is part of the power of the artwork. Again, if there were a mania for these things such that no living room were complete without a shark preserved in a tank, I'd have problems -- the same problems I'd have with a hundred green bioluminescent bunnies mass produced rather than one that remains anomalous. I also wouldn't buy the artwork (or sharkwork if you will). In fact I don't particularly want to even see it. But it doesn't seem wrong to me to have produced it, especially the sacrifice was -- at least in my perhaps too generous understanding -- acknowledged and in fact mandated by the conceptual piece, which yoked the loss of life to the challenge it attempted to mount. Nicola is quite right: capital is that formaldehyde. But formaldehyde has a tendency to leak, and there's a way that shark and its artist and its buyer and the museum get more than they bargained for with the display.J J Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21572227705037201122007-07-20T14:17:00.000-04:002007-07-20T14:17:00.000-04:00By the way, did anyone else see this?(via Boing Bo...By the way, did anyone else see <A HREF="http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/07/fucking_with_perception_hirsts_for_the_l.html" REL="nofollow">this</A>?<BR/><BR/>(via Boing Boing)Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-84741943505649808302007-07-20T14:11:00.000-04:002007-07-20T14:11:00.000-04:00One initial, and likely simplistic, way to respond...One initial, and likely simplistic, way to respond to Hirst's shark-tank artwork is to say that I really really really do not like the idea of animals having to be killed for a piece of art--that is what I would call a truly "useless" appropriation, or justification, of an animal's death, never mind the fact that the shark had to be "harvested," as it were, from its "world." Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, I know animals [including humans] die all the time, and I mustn't demonstrate ethical outrage against the "fishing" of this shark unless I can muster equal outrage for shark-fishing in general--whether as art or food, no one needs these sharks to be killed. It isn't *necessary*. But without romanticizing death--whether the death of a shark or of a citizen of Roman London--I don't think it's too risky to make the argument that if one does not absolutely have to go out of one's way to take a life, then he or she should not. Even the tiny bit of fear, or adrenaline, or what have you that may have been expressed, or felt, at the moment of the shark's "taking," would be the result of the infliction of an unnecessary harm.<BR/><BR/>Opps--must run! More later.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-28293621098810039672007-07-20T12:06:00.000-04:002007-07-20T12:06:00.000-04:00You may think you are looking at a dead shark in a...<I>You may think you are looking at a dead shark in a tank, but what you’re really seeing is the convergence of two careers, the coming together of two masters in the art of the yield</I><BR/><BR/>Surely the "but" is the problem here. And the missing point between the "tank" and the "but" (which should be an "and"): "You may think you are looking at a dead shark in a tank, [which is/means/aims to express (insert Nicola's comment here, for example)], <I>and</I>..." I think the editorial then could have referenced something like, say, Richard Ohmann ("Culture cannot, without straining, be understood as a reflex of basic economic activity, when culture is itself a core industry and a major source of capital accumulation").<BR/><BR/>More on death later?Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-78649124178757744942007-07-20T11:35:00.000-04:002007-07-20T11:35:00.000-04:00I suspect that Hirst's appeal (apart from transfer...I suspect that Hirst's appeal (apart from transferring dead animal bodies from the natural history museum to the art gallery and thus 'reliquizing' them, reinvesting the corpse, whose magic presence has been killed by science, with the secular sacrednesss of art) has to do with a homology, very much implied in Jeffrey's comments, between grandiloquent art economics and the pieces themselves as allegories of the same. Thus a kind of transparent tautology seems to hang over Hirst's work: as the formaldehyded beast (an overgrown 'sample' that, like a 1:1 scale map, undoes its own usefulness - another tautology!) is an ostentatious entombment of something that lives elsewhere, so art is preserved by big money. Id est, money = formaldehyde.Nicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.com